Casilda O'Brian knew she could calm her nerves if that girl in the back of the wagon would only stop crying. The tears had started flowing as soon as they had stepped off the train in Virginia. Maybe it was their charming host that inspired her. He was a lump of a man. His uniform was a disgrace, not at all like those of the trim soldiers that had marched through the streets of Boston.

With a thump the wagon hit a rut in the road, and her body rose a foot from the roughly hewn plank that served as a seat. Not only did this flight bring a sharp pain to her posterior, but her straw hat fell to one side as well. Making a wild grab, she tried to right it before giving up to hold on for dear life.

Hot and dusty, the young woman wondered what she had gotten herself into. Why am I sitting next to this gruff, unshaven soldier who is treating me and the other girls with utter disdain? She glanced back at her companions from the train. Oh my, she realized, they have nothing to cling to. The once-animated group was now reduced to a colorful heap of sprawling arms and legs in the back of the wagon.

"Must you go so fast?" Cassie shouted to the driver.

"Listen, lady, we're in no-man's-land. It belongs to neither North nor South. Perhaps you want to get your pretty little hat blown off, but I'm keepin' my head."

Upon the driver's loud "Yah!" and a crack of his whip, the large, brutish horses set off at an even faster pace than before.

Cassie tried to comprehend the meaning of "no-man's-land" as he spewed tobacco juice in every direction, including on himself. She turned away in disgust. Obviously, this was the source of his distinct odor. Indignantly, she wiped a bit of his drool from the sleeve of her stylish new Zouave jacket.

Cassie, buck up. This is exactly what you wanted. This is what you volunteered for. You couldn't stand idly by with so many men dying ... with the man you loved dead ... It just wasn't enough to roll bandages and gossip over tea in her mother's kitchen. But ... am I ready for whatever is to come?

The air became thick with putrid smoke, and she felt her heart beating rapidly. There is nothing to worry about, she told herself. Haven't I been to Boston's poorest houses with Mother? Cassie had seen sick, dirty people before, but she always knew her mother had shielded her from the worst of it. Many times hushed voices coming from behind closed doors had stopped abruptly when she entered the room. The vision of her mother's face suddenly disappeared. Cassie's eyes were stinging. Her delicate hand brought a lace-trimmed handkerchief to her nose and mouth.

There was no turning back. Three days' train travel with connections through Boston, New York, and Baltimore had brought her to this hideous conveyance. They were arriving. Cassie held on to her hat and strained to see the camp through the smoke. It was silhouetted against the beautiful evening sky but surrounded by a scorched wasteland. Small fires still burned. Something must have happened not too long ago.

A large tent was really two tents connected. That must be the field hospital. It seemed as if her whole life had led up to this moment. Caring for the poor, her mother's training, was all for this. I'm a good nurse. I'm ready. I have to be.

The wagon lurched to a halt in front of the hospital tent. The soldier who had been driving jumped from his seat, quickly secured the horses, and hurried off. Cassie hadn't expected fanfare upon her arrival, but to be totally ignored stunned and confused her. People shouted and scurried around her, all of them seemingly knowing what to do. But she did not know what to do; so for the moment she sat silently, trying not to cry, while in the back of the wagon that horrible girl, Marie, continued to cry. Now the other girl, the larger one, Ermengard, was comforting her.

To escape them, she climbed down from her perch. An officer came out of the tent and inspected her. He was tall and also unshaven. Are there no razors in this godforsaken place? If so, a well-groomed beard would be perfectly acceptable.

She extended her hand.

"How do you do? I'm Miss Casilda O'Brian. I've been assigned as a nurse for ..."

"Great, I'm Captain Vaughn; we need you inside," he said as he took her arm.

He gave a quick glance toward her disheveled fellow travelers. Ermengard stood up as if to speak to him but abruptly turned and retched over the side of the wagon. He must have decided against asking them to join him, because Cassie was brought into the tent without delay. Thank heavens someone is taking charge of me. She sighed, deeply satisfied that her dream of nursing the brave soldiers of the Union Army was about to come true.

Her dream did not last long, though; she woke up as if she had been slapped. The flickering candles spread an eerie light on an area where there was no space to walk, no way to avoid trampling the wounded soldiers. Yet she was being summoned to come to the far end of the tent. As she tried to step over them, men moaned, cried, bled, and vomited. Cassie stopped.

"For God's sake, O'Brian, walk around it," the captain urged brusquely.

But Cassie couldn't move. She couldn't make herself walk past a pile of limbs. Her eyes could not leave the sight of tangled arms with dirty hands and ringed fingers pointing nowhere. The hairy legs had bloody edges where they had been hacked off to expose chunks of flesh and white bone. The smell was overwhelming. Perspiration dotted her forehead.

"O'Brian, take it easy," the captain whispered. He extended his hand, and Cassie took it and looked away.

A groaning soldier reached out to her, and she paused again to help him.

"Don't bother with him."

The soldier's distressed face tormented her, but the captain had her by the shoulders and pushed her on ahead.

"Listen to me, O'Brian," he said from behind. "Ignore the slightly wounded and the mortally wounded. We're here to save lives. Understand? Save lives. Now I need your help over here. Get rid of that hat, and grab an apron."

Cassie looked around. There was a ledge in front of a small looking glass. She removed the pin from her still crooked hat and laid it on the shelf. Her image stared back at her from the mirror. Her hair was still together confidently in a tight bun, but her large, dark eyes reflected an extremely young and inexperienced girl.

"O'Brian!" the captain shouted, and she pulled an apron free from a long nail embedded in a crude pole. With a quick dismissal of her emotions, she ran toward the sound of his voice. She was next to him, but he didn't look at her. They were both staring at a gaping shoulder wound.

"Our job is to stop the bleeding and debride." Cassie turned to him, not comprehending the last word. He also stopped to look at her. For a moment his expression revealed his annoyance for her incompetence, but patiently he explained, "That means we clean out the dead tissue or any foreign matter from the wound.

She whispered, "Yes," and they moved on.

"I sew up wounds and put splints on fractures, but mostly I amputate." He looked into her eyes closely. "And ... you will help me. Do you understand?" She hoped that the inner terror she felt was not evident in her face as she nodded a quick assent.

Cassie spent the rest of the night following the captain through a maze of bloody work. He expected his orders to be obeyed, so he didn't bark them out...